No one wants these disproportional, ugly windmills. People don’t want their views obstructed. Even in a godless society, the modern cult of ugliness is so unnatural that human nature rebels against it. So why can’t they make beautiful windmills? Why must the industry insist upon these cold, depressing behemoths?
A green new world is coming as activists move to impose their eco-agenda upon society. The present administration is introducing “infrastructure” reform, which will develop green energy sources at warp speed. Windmills and solar panels are all the rage.
However, all is not well in the efforts to build a green new world. The race for clean wind energy is facing headwinds that threaten to shear off its future.
Windmills seem to have everything going for them. The technology has never been better as the turbines are ever more efficient. The windmills have plenty of financial backing. Green energy is the latest and greatest asset for every investment portfolio. Wind power is popular, with seventy percent of the public favors expanding it.
Unwanted Windmills
The big problem with modern windmills is that they are ugly. No one wants them in the backyard. The oversized giant propellers in the sky are unsightly, unnervingly noisy, and unwanted.
All across the nation, communities are rejecting windmill projects. Hundreds of local governments have resisted the temptation to go windmill green. President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan envisions “tens of thousands of wind turbines.” The problem will be finding places, not the cash, to build them.
Ironically, the bluer the state, the more hostile the reception. In New York, for example, officials have adopted a people-be-damned policy. So many communities rejected wind projects that the Cuomo administration recently imposed regulations allowing government officials to override community objections and issue permits for large-scale projects.
In California, eco-promoters face a similar dilemma. Most clean energy developers have given up on finding significant sites for new wind projects due to local opposition. No winds of change are blowing in Sen. Bernie Sander’s Vermont as turbine construction is at a standstill.
Indeed, liberals have a hard time practicing what they preach. Regarding wind, their concern for the environment appears to be a lot of hot (and still) air.
Wind Is Ugly Energy
In a materialistic world, people rarely choose beauty over dollars. However, the verdict is in on wind turbines. Beauty wins.
It is not enough that energy production satisfies the physical needs of the nation. It must also accommodate the needs of the soul. Wind energy does not involve the relatively small yet ugly generating plants of the past. It calls for planting massive forests of obstructive noisy mills dominating the landscape.
Alas, wind power is ugly energy without a soul. It destroys the beauty of the environment it seeks to save. Wherever it is found, it oppresses by its slow, sinister movements and obnoxious noise. It cannot be ignored since it is ever-present and demands the attention of all who pass by.
Thus, no one wants these disproportional wind machines. People don’t want their views obstructed. They don’t want to live in ugly places, and so property values become depressed when windmills go up. Visitors stay away when ugly mills blight scenic landscapes. The alien contraptions kill the local culture since they are all the same, disregarding the likes and creations of the people around them. No wonder they generate more controversy than electricity in many places.
Only big government and the left favor the cyclopean machines because their modern materialistic philosophies see everything through an economic prism that cares little for the spiritual side of things. Thus, secular policymakers extend every incentive to cover America with monstrous windmills to increase energy production. On the left, socialism is an anti-metaphysical and atheistic sect that denies any transcendent reality like truth, beauty, or goodness. The ugly windmill, like Soviet architecture, is the embodiment of its vulgar and egalitarian philosophy of life.
Making Windmills Beautiful Again
The visceral rejection of giant wind turbines leads to the questions: Why can’t they make beautiful windmills? Why must the industry insist upon these cold, depressing behemoths?
Indeed, making beautiful windmills can be done. The famous Dutch windmills were works of art and examples of amazing innovation. The old mills still attract people with their picturesque beauty and charm. They represent the harmony of humanity with nature. They satisfy the needs of both body and soul. They unite the practical and the ornamental. From such associations, a culture is born, and a people develops.
Thus, the answer to the questions goes beyond mere economic considerations. People do not want to build beautiful windmills because beauty is an abstraction that does not have sufficient value in today’s warped scale of values. Society has become godless and seeks only material gratification, and avoids beauty and good, which have their absolute perfection in God.
However, even in a godless society, the modern cult of ugliness is so unnatural that human nature rebels against it. Indeed, at least some people have the good sense to reject the revolting turbines. That is one more reason why it is so essential to engage in the Culture War so that one day windmills can be made beautiful again.
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…”the modern cult of ugliness is so unnatural”….indeed: architecture, music, politics and even the windmill, a cultic totem
Yes, these windmills are hideous, while those in Holland are picturesque and charming. But nothing as massive and multiple as acres of green (actually bone-white) turbines can be made beautiful. The most harmonious domestic architecture in the U.S. is the French Quarter. That is partly because of the man-sized scale of the buildings. The corporations and investors have bought up whole blocks to offer as perks to clients, thus turning the Vieux Carre into a watering-hole and a decadent one at that. Families no longer live there and the human element is sadly dissolute. This seems to happen with every unique city or landscape. The rich and important people “invest” and dehumanize what used to be delightful human habitations. Much of the current administration’s “investment” in so-called infrastructure will likely be financially and aesthetically ruinous. That’s called “progress.”
I’m guessing that beautiful wind-turbine power generators are inefficient. The economics of wind power, I read, are quite poor even with utilitarian machines.
John Horvat’s analysis of an emerging anxiety, evident in many people’s responses to the erection of ugly windmills in their neighbourhood, might be similar to that experienced by many veterans of World War 1.
‘Shell Shock’ which we now term ‘PTSD’, was suspected to have been caused by unrelenting noise from cannon fire and the visual assault by an endless denuded landscape.
If my analogy holds up, perhaps a levy on the premiums for Public Liability Insurance, payable by construction businesses, could be imposed to fund Psychiatric fees, incurred by sufferers of ‘Windmill Stress Disorder’.
I wonder what the birds think of them.
Coal-powered power plants are very ugly. I know, because I used to live nearby one! Wind energy is basically energy for free, as the UK will tell you.
Would you be so kind to define “free”?
When one says that energy is “free,” it is obvious that that person has no idea what they are talking about.
I do not find the wind turbines particularly ugly. They are minimal, sleek, and not as intrusive as the grotesque, natural gas powered industrial box of a powerplant we have near the coast here.
If I could choose between the two, I would certainly opt for the wind turbines as the lesser of two aesthetic evils.
I must qualify that statement with the fact I have never seen one of these structures in person, and I was unaware of the noise.
The noise would be intrusive in a major way. Added to the sound of jetliners overhead, and other manmade noises, it would be grating. Our technology should be getting quieter, not adding to noise pollution.
I will have to add that anyone that has been around an operating windmill of the wooden kind can report it too added to the noise pollution of its time. Now we visit and find it quaint, but do not have to live with it daily.
As technology improves, those wind turbines should (hopefully) become less intrusive as their design is improved, or abandoned for more efficient and favorable methods of harnessing wind energy.
What would make them more beautiful?
For my personal tastes, they would quietly (visually and audibly) blend into the landscape and hardly be noticeable.
That includes the power transmission lines. We have towers that run from the coast to the city and they are an eyesore at best.
Has the author ever seen oil derricks? Not the prettiest things in the world. Where is the outcry to make oil pumping beautiful? It is obvious the author simply dislikes clean energy like wind power for cultural reasons. As he himself notes, wind power is extremely popular and increasingly competitive with fossil fuels in cost. The real moral here is that while people generally support “clear power,” it is exceedingly hard to get them to do anything that will negatively affect their own lives (like ruin their views.) Hopefully we can get past that barrier and embrace energy that keeps our air and land clean.
The physics of generating a lot of power from wind turbines mandates ugly starkness. You can’t make them quaint on a large enough scale, i.e. low to the ground. Ideas along those lines end up being small-scale, which skips the point. You offer no specifics, just hope.
The 3-blade design ends up being the most efficient and balanced, more so when bigger. They could stop making them bleached white in theory, for lower contrast, but there are reasons they keep that scheme.
History also shows that “conservatives” have no problem with aesthetic scars on nature from strip mining and drilling, so the notion that the left doesn’t respect natural beauty is odd. It ends up being right-wing types who actually carve the roads and build the wind turbines, anyhow.
Leftist tend to push Big Wind for tribal reasons, wanting to be “against Big Oil,” which they associate with conservative agendas. I’d call it a wash on denial of reality.